Email this page to a friend!

Column: Perspectives on Poverty
Notice (8): Undefined index:  url [APP/views/blogs/index.ctp, line 43]

Reframing Support for Development
 

Matti Navellou is the Global Poverty Project's Activation Coordinator in the UK. This article was published in Global Village, Imperial College's Journal of International Affairs in January 2011. You can get a pdf version of the article here.

Extreme poverty isn’t a sexy subject. But it is one that affects 1.4 billion people today. 

The fact that 1.4 billion individuals, sharing our common humanity, with the same capacity as us to feel pain, hunger, love, with the same aspirations and potential for greatness, currently live on less than $1.25 a day and lack access to basic opportunities such as clean water, health-care, education and food…can seem overwhelmingly depressing.

Seeing starving kids on TV adverts is depressing. It’s enough to make us want to switch off. It seems like nothing has changed since the days of Live Aid back in the early 1980s.

But what if I told you that extreme poverty has halved since then, and that we could eradicate extreme poverty within a generation?

Five years ago, 16 million people signed on to MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY, getting behind the vision that seeing an end to extreme poverty was achievable.

Yet, since then, the momentum has stalled. When I talk to people today, they feel powerless. They keep asking, “What has really changed since then? How can I make a difference?”

They feel powerless because they don’t know what happened next. They don’t know what went on after their white arm-bands faded to yellow, and the Live8 concert tents had been packed up and everyone went home.

This is the story of what can happen next, what we can do to move our understanding beyond starving children and sell-out concerts.

The Global Poverty Project
I work for the Global Poverty Project, an educational campaigning organisation that raises awareness about extreme poverty to bridge the gap between public sympathy and effective public action.
It’s a growing gap – one that I first came to appreciate when I sat in a room with people from other NGOs and charities working on poverty in the UK. We were drawn together to talk about building public support for development – to ask the question of why, out of the 16 million who’d signed up to MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY, only a small percentage were still actively involved in trying to put an end to extreme poverty.

We were there to try to make sense of it all.

Research conducted by the Development Education Association (DEA) shows that real understanding of global poverty in the UK is very limited. Perceptions of aid and charity are dominated by the “Live Aid Legacy” which perpetuates a patronizing, almost colonial vision of magnanimous Western powers handing out aid to grateful developing countries. We desperately need to move beyond this, to an understanding of development that addresses and appreciates its complexity, and is based on a vision of a common humanity and interdependence.

Why should we care?
My friend Vicky managed to capture the public’s frustration with these issues when she said: “I’d love to help, but I’m confronted by the same images of starving children every year and am fed up of feeling guilty. I have no idea where my donations have gone or what progress has been made in this area. Why should I keep giving if it seems like nothing has changed? I just don’t feel like there is anything practical I can do to help.”

Vicky’s response exhibits anger towards three things: lack of access to information on progress that has been made in international development, charities that use images of victimization to elicit feelings of guilt for the purpose of increasing donations and finally, the frustration of not knowing what she can do to help beyond giving money.

Surely this points to a flagrant gap in the NGO sector in the UK? Why does the public not have access to this information? How can they turn existing sympathy into action when there is no increase in educational awareness on these issues?

Why the guilt?
DFID have run public attitude surveys for over a decade and a recent report, Public Attitudes Towards Development, shows that the percentage of individuals that are very concerned about extreme poverty is currently at 21%, the lowest since 1999, after which levels of engagement have either been static or falling.

Falling support has led to a fundraising paradox for charities. Donations in the recession have fallen in some charities by up to fifteen percent, leading to intense pressure on fundraising departments to meet targets. So, out come the guilt-inducing images of starving kids, as they are a great fundraiser. But, they undermine longer-term support and perpetuate a perverse and restrictive representation aid.

Human nature is such that in order to avoid feeling guilty and powerless, we normalize these shocking images of the developing world that some media and charities bombard us with and “Charity fatigue” inevitably creeps in. Without increased knowledge about how to change the situation of those living in extreme poverty, the real lives and issues behind the images are pushed to the periphery of the public’s understanding of aid.

The images become trapped in a frame of “aid” in the public mind, where aid becomes permanently linked with donations and guilt. Too often, charities’ messages are relentlessly negative. Guilt-inducing advertising will only spur action to a certain extent before people turn to denial and apathy.

According to a recent paper by Bond, the UK membership organization for NGOs working in international development, most people interpret “aid” as “donations to charities in response to disasters” severely undermining the complex and multi-faceted nature of aid work. This points to an urgent need to shift the public understanding of “aid” to something that includes an understanding of the progress that has been made in reaching aid targets.

Where are the success stories?
The irony of this situation is that great progress has been made in reducing extreme poverty and in reaching the Millennium Development Goal targets agreed upon in 2000. We know that things like aid invested in education, women and infrastructure, microloans, free trade and export oriented growth work are helping reach these targets.

We know that maternal deaths through childbirth have decreased by about 35% since 1980. We know that where in 1982, 52% of the world’s population was living in extreme poverty, that figure is down to 25% today.

Yet, instead of being aware of this positive change, we hear about corruption, insurmountable natural disasters and the ongoing spread of HIV.

What we don’t hear are the success stories .We don’t hear the fact that something as simple as building toilets for girls in schools in Western Tanzania can increase female attendance by 30 %, that Rwanda, one of the world’s poorest countries has had national health insurance for 11 years now covering 92 percent of the nation with premiums at $2 a year enabling life expectancy to rise from 48 to 52 despite the ongoing spread of AIDS, that in terms of global health we’ve eradicated smallpox, contained polio to just four countries and cut measles deaths by 74% in the last 10 years, that over the last 50 years South Korea has transformed from being an aid recipient country to a bustling aid donor due to investing in education and infrastructure, that extreme poverty has dropped from 49% to 30% in Ghana due to policies implemented in 1992 that promoted economic growth and poverty alleviation.

Around the world, in the last 50 years, we have actually seen a clear pattern of falling infant mortality, rising literacy, rising incomes, rising life expectancy and a falling number of people living in extreme poverty.

These are the stories that should be at the forefront of public awareness.

What is the Global Poverty Project doing to challenge this?
For the last year, the Global Poverty Project, working in partnership with other UK NGOs, has been raising awareness on these issues, trying to shift British public attitudes towards development into something positive: into a belief that practical actions can be taken by each and every one of us in our daily lives to contribute to putting an end to extreme poverty.

We have been traveling the UK delivering an awareness-raising presentation called 1.4 Billion Reasons, named after the 1.4 billion people currently living on less than $1.25 a day.

1.4 Billion Reasons takes people through the issues surrounding extreme poverty, answering people’s questions on corruption, aid efficacy, trade barriers and the Millenium Development Goals. It gives people hope about what can be done, hope that is supported by facts on progress already made in the fight against extreme poverty.

It’s incredible to watch people’s reactions after hearing the stories of women lifting themselves out of poverty through micro-enterprise or how far we have come in terms of global health. “I went along to this presentation knowing the bare minimum and came away inspired and enlightened and feeling I had truly learnt something”, said Kiri Bowers, after seeing 1.4 Billion Reasons in London, “I spent the next two hours with my father and brother planning what we could do to make this objective a reality.”

Kiri’s words show how increased education on issues of poverty and positive communication around the progress that has been made in poverty-reduction can kick-start deeper reflection and action on these issues. There are evidently still important challenges and barriers to be overcome in this fight but we can change attitudes by informing people about what is achievable and the progress that is being made.

Earlier this year, we got a call from Nestle because two children, no older than 12, had independently decided to write to the company, after seeing 1.4 Billion Reasons at their school, to ask what the company were doing to ensure their supply chains were ethical.

This is progress.

No action towards ending extreme poverty is too small. Because small demonstrations of a change in attitudes will, without a doubt, develop into something big, something that rises to such potency and immeasurability, that politicians, governments and policy-makers will reach a stage where they too feel the weight and urgency of this movement, of this wave of change about to break.

As this wave spreads, transporting more people in its path, we inch closer to ending extreme poverty within a generation.

This wave of change in attitudes towards poverty has already started.

It is the same wave that made Bill and Melinda Gates call themselves “impatient optimists” in relation to progress in international development and global health at a function a few weeks ago in London, and the very same wave that recently made Cadbury turn Fairtrade.

We can do this together
I’ll always remember the words that Denise Robertson, long-standing TV presenter for ITVs This Morning, said to me at one of our launches.

"Technological advance has made it impossible to stay, eyes shut, in our own little world”, she said. “ We can see what is happening to our fellow human beings. Global poverty is no longer “their” problem. It is our problem." 

Denise’s words bring us back to the notion of a shared humanity. Irrelevant of where we live, the clothes we have on our back, the amount of cash in our pockets or food in our bellies, we all share one thing: our humanity. We have the same ability to feel hope and pain, to love and to laugh.

Through small steps each and every one of us can make the vision of a world without extreme poverty within a generation a reality. In a time of lack of trust in governments, why not place trust in our selves to make the right ethical choices, and use our own voices to change policy. Let’s reach a stage where politicians can’t get elected without a clear, cohesive national plan on tackling extreme poverty. It may seem like we’re a long way off, but given the passion and dedication I’ve witnessed on these issues, we may just be on the right track.

 
Posted by Matti Navellou (UK Activation Coordinator) in What Can I Do? for column Perspectives on Poverty on Feb 7th 2011, 08:15
Comments: 2 | Post a Comment

Voluntourism
 

As part of our ongoing Perspective on Poverty series, this article from guest blogger Francesca Rhodes asks if short-term volunteering overseas is good for the fight against poverty.

The industry for combining volunteering with travel (or ‘voluntourism’) is booming. But the sector is controversial, accused of irresponsibly promoting the idea that tourists can make a real difference to development by spending a few weeks of their time at a project.

According to the critics, this approach purely serves the needs and aspirations of the volunteer, and can have negative effects on the local communities that have to host and direct people who have little or no experience in the work they are carrying out.

One volunteer company doesn’t seem to shy away from this assumption, allowing potential volunteers to search through its projects with the questions, ‘Where do you want to go?’, ‘What do you want to do’ and ‘How long do you want to go for?’. If the volunteer is there to ‘make a difference’ to local communities then surely it should be ‘What can you do?’, ‘What are your skills’ and ‘Where are you needed?’.

Voluntouring isn’t cheap either. Volunteers usually shell out for flights, insurance, transfers, food, visas and vaccinations as well as the volunteer placement fee, which can be up to £400 a week.
The critics (including a character in our recent ‘aid worker’ video), argue that this money could be better spent if it was donated straight to the project, for example it would last a lot longer used as a salary for a qualified local worker to take the place of the volunteer.

But sometimes these criticisms can all feel a bit cynical. Surely there are lots of projects that would benefit from enthusiastic volunteers committing their time and energy, even if only for a short time? And isn’t there huge potential for utilising volunteers who return from their trip inspired, better informed about the world and looking to contribute more?

From my experience volunteering abroad, I would say that both sides of the argument have truth in them. The key to making sure your volunteering abroad is useful, efficient and positive for both parties is being honest about what skills you really have to offer as a volunteer, and careful research into where these skills might be used most effectively.

When I was 18 I volunteered as a teacher in the South Pacific country of Vanuatu. I hadn’t been much further east than Norwich before and had no experience teaching or working with young people. But, I had always dreamt of living on a tropical island - ever since seeing ‘The Beach’ aged 14 it had been a bit of an obsession. I believed that if placements were on offer there then these poor people must need me. Before I arrived I pictured myself surrounded by happy smiling children whose life chances had been drastically improved by my imparted wisdom and English language skills.

The reality was of course quite different. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my time living on an amazing tropical island steeped in history and culture, and I met some of the most welcoming and friendly people on the planet. I had an amazing year and my experience still influences me personally and professionally. What troubles me is that I could have experienced these things without taking up that particular teaching placement, and the arrogance in assuming children ‘needed’ to be taught by an unqualified and inexperienced westerner.

My school already had an English teacher, Lizzy, who was from the island and had stuck it out through high school and Uni to qualify – and she was really good at her job. When I arrived I took over her classes, and as I was completely new to teaching and had minimal (one week) training, it took me quite some time to get into it, and frankly I was never going to be as good as her. It would have been far better for me to have played an assistant role to Lizzy in her classes, or to have focused on helping students with their conversational English. However when I had seen teaching assistant placements advertised in the volunteer brochure, I turned them down in favour of full teaching as I thought I would make more of a difference that way.

It was partly the volunteer organisation’s fault, they should have had a better understanding of the education system in Vanuatu and the local community to know what their needs really were and weren’t. But it was also my fault for choosing a placement based on what I wanted to get out of it, not what I could honestly offer at the time.

I don’t have a problem with people wanting to see more of the world through voluntourism, it can provide links to communities which most tourists will never interact with, and these relationships can be mutually beneficial. I don’t have a problem with people shelling out thousands of pounds for placements which could be arranged locally for a fraction of the price, some people wouldn’t be confident doing so and would therefore never go. I don’t have a problem with qualified western teachers working in developing countries where there is a need (although this is a short term solution to a long term problem).

What I do have a problem with is volunteering projects which are not locally needed, not culturally sensitive and focus more on the aspirations of the volunteer than the community they are trying to help. There are some great ways to volunteer out there, but as volunteers we need to be honest and humble about what we can provide, and we need to challenge the sector to provide sustainable and effective ways to contribute our time.

So, if you’d like volunteer overseas for a short period, here are some sites and resources that I feel are approaching things the right way:
- Ecoteer offers community based, low cost volunteering projects committed to environmental, economic and socio-cultural responsibility. 100% of the programme fee goes to the project and projects do not pay to list opportunities on the site.
- 2 Way development is a specialist international volunteer agency, placing skilled volunteers with sustainable development projects.
- Volunteer 4 Africa is an independent, non profit organisation providing a database of low cost volunteering projects.
- Volunteer Latin America is an information service connecting volunteers to non profit organizations seeking independent volunteers in Central and South America.
- Volunteer Thailand provides instant access to organizations in Thailand actively seeking international volunteers.

If you’re interested in spending longer overseas and have strong skills to offer, then check out VSO in the UK, AVI in Australia or Peace Corps in the USA.
Posted by Francesca Rhodes (Guest Blogger) in What Can I Do? for column Perspectives on Poverty on Feb 1st 2011, 14:47
Comments: 7 | Post a Comment

Want to be an aid worker?
 

 

We get a lot of questions at the Global Poverty Project about how to become an aid worker. So, in response, we put together this short satirical animation to suggest that you don't have to go 'Africa' to make a difference to fighting poverty.

If you'd like to learn more about how, see our how-to guides or our blog series on what can I do?

In the coming weeks, we'll be posting more on how you can make a difference both locally and overseas, and we will to profile people who are doing just that.

UPDATE 26/1: We've just published the first follow-up piece, Career advice (from people smarter than me) by Dave Algoso, which gives a fantastic introduction to how you can get a job in the aid and development sector. It gives some great advice about how to avoid some of the assumptions and pitfalls that we poked fun at last week, and gives a realistic sense of both the opportunities and challenges of getting into the sector.
Posted by Simon Moss - GPP General Manager (Policy and Content Development) in What Can I Do? for column Perspectives on Poverty on Jan 17th 2011, 18:35
Comments: 18 | Post a Comment

Reporting on natural disasters in poor countries
 

In this perspectives on poverty article, Simon Moss takes a look how the media cover natural disasters in poor countries, and the impact this has on our perception of people in extreme poverty.

I’ll admit it, I’m a news junkie. Ten or so times a day I’ll check the news headlines, looking for anything new that’s relevant to me. As someone whose job it is to communicate extreme poverty, that means looking out for any news from the world’s poorest countries (or as the media tend to call it, “Africa” or “Asia”).

After several years doing this, I’ve discovered that the media has four different stories that they file on poor countries – corruption, conflict, crazy and catastrophe. Each hook has its merits and drawbacks, but recently, stories about large-scale natural disasters have started to follow a rather unhelpful pattern, which goes something like this…

Day 1: We have reports of a massive disaster in Equatorial Kundu (cue graphic showing location of country on a map). Hundreds, thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of (coloured) people are feared dead. We also have unconfirmed reports that several of our (white) citizens may have been involved.

Day 2: It’s a lot worse than we thought. The government of Equatorial Kundu have urgently asked for help from the international community. The Prime Minister said today that we stand in solidarity with the people of Equatorial Kundu, and will provide all possible assistance. Oxfam and other aid agencies have launched an appeal for the victims of this disaster, which you can give to on this number. The death toll is expected to climb dramatically in the coming days, and we can now confirm that at least one of our own nationals has died.

Day 3: We can take you now via a phone link to our journalist, who has just landed in Equatorial Kundu…

“It’s a scene of total devastation here, I’ve never seen anything like it. The local government has been overwhelmed, and as aid agencies arrive, the local people are desperate for help. As I picked through the ruins, I met people who had lost their whole families.”

Day 4: Our reporter on the ground in Equatorial Kundu reports:

“A day after I arrive, I’m shocked at the magnitude of this disaster. But, amidst the tragedy, there are amazing stories of hope, people being pulled from the rubble by family members who had searched for days.“
“I’m here with a representative from an aid agency.”
Pan to aid worker
“The people of Equatorial Kundu urgently need your help. We have launched an appeal to provide for urgently needed food, water and shelter for these people. It will take months, years…” (cut off by journalist)
“Thanks, back to you in the studio.”

Day 5: Tonight we take you live to Equatorial Kundu, where serious questions are being asked about aid efforts:

“Five days after this country was changed forever, aid is nowhere to be seen. The first supplies have arrived, but aid agencies have failed to reach people on the ground.”

Day 6: Miracle survival stories:

“Almost a week after the disaster, and amidst ongoing claims that aid agencies are failing to respond, tonight we bring you a story of hope. In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen people pulled from the rubble, still alive.”
(cut to dramatic rescue footage, emotional relatives crying in relief)

Day 7: “Aid has finally started to reach victims of the Kundu disaster, but there are increasing concerns about disease and civil disorder. Tens of thousands of people made homeless by the disaster are tonight sheltering under tents provided by relief efforts. A huge logistical effort is underway to provide food, water and shelter for them. But, as bodies continue to rot under the rubble, health experts fear a major outbreak of cholera. And, there are reports of civil disorder as people overwhelm the meagre aid supplies, and gangs loot deserted shops.”

Then, the disaster starts to fall away from the headlines for a few days, there being no miracles to report. Until, suddenly…

Around day 10: Tonight we bring you a special report from the countryside of Equatorial Kundu. “Here, a few hours outside of the capital, it’s like the disaster struck yesterday. 10 days after the world’s attention was so tragically focused on this country, I can report the shocking fact that aid efforts have completely failed to reach this community. Despite the huge sums of money raised for relief efforts, locals tell me that they’ve received no aid. For them, it’s too little, too late.”

Stories will appear with decreasing frequency in the following weeks, with notable spikes at the one, three and six month marks. All of these stories will be punctuated by the theme, “very little has changed here. Thousands still live in emergency tents and disease remains a daily threat. Aid agencies say the recovery will take longer, but the international community is growing impatient that aid efforts have been slow and piecemeal.”

This is the narrative that played out twice this year, with examples of coverage from the BBC for Haiti earthquake or the Pakistan floods. Along with the fictional example above, these show how a series of factually correct stories add up to a narrative with three negative consequences.

  • Aid efforts are always portrayed as too slow / ineffective.
    Delivering aid in disaster areas is hard. Even though much of the criticism levelled at aid efforts during disasters is warranted, doing this through the media means that the public are bombarded with inconsistent messages. On the one hand, we’re being urged to give, yet at the same time, we’re being told that our donations aren’t making a difference, and that aid organisations are incompetent. The result –rising levels of public concern about aid effectiveness, and the belief that aid doesn’t work.
     
  • People in disaster are only ever shown as victims or criminals.
    Given how seldom we actually encounter people in poor countries, we tend to generalise from the images that we see in the media. The consequence of media coverage of disasters is that we implicitly feel that all people in poor countries must be like the victims or criminals that we see in reports. That frames our broader response to people in poverty, reinforcing the idea that we need to ‘save’ these people – from disasters and themselves.
     
  • Related to this, coverage of disasters almost never mentions local efforts to respond.
    Local charities, local government and local people are nowhere to be seen. The history, politics, economy, geography and culture of a country becomes irrelevant as it’s reduced to an icon of suffering. By missing the good and bad of a country, the message becomes one of us (rich, white, western) needing to go in and ‘fix’ these countries.

The impact of all of this is that we become desensitised to the magnitude and human tragedy of these disasters. We come to see them as just part of a broader narrative of hopelessness and incompetence in “Africa” and “Asia,” and we’re left with the impression that there’s nothing we can do to help.

But, there’s much that we can do to help. It starts with supporting organisations who work on disaster preparedness, so communities are better able to manage if things do go wrong. It’s about supporting broader efforts to enable good governance and fight corruption, so that if disasters do happen, the local government is trusted and equipped to respond. And, it’s about taking the news with a rather large grain of salt.
Posted by Simon Moss - GPP General Manager (Policy and Content Development) in Aid, Poverty for column Perspectives on Poverty on Dec 30th 2010, 10:29
Comments: 3 | Post a Comment

What's wrong with the reporting of development...
 

Whilst we commend A.J.'s actions, the reporting in this article is particularly unhelpful and encapsulates all our objections at the media's reporting of development.

From the Salt Lake Tribune.
Posted by Guy Kirkpatrick - GPP Intern in for column Perspectives on Poverty on Dec 20th 2010, 12:00
Comments: 0 | Post a Comment